Nesting in Bangalore – Part III

We recently moved (again) – the desire to live in a nicer apartment, far outweighs the hassle of dealing with the agents of Bangalore, their weird accents and their absolute failure to understand our requirements, not to mention the greed of the landlords! This time we were very lucky – we found an apartment without the help of an agent (no, that site promising freedom from brokers did not help) and the most wonderful landlords who didn’t just agree to a reduced security deposit, but also agreed to let us move before we paid it!

So now we are in a lovely apartment, but the woes never end, do they? Once you’ve found that perfect house, comes the next source of stress. Furniture, drapes, accessories to fill those empty corners. It should be relatively easy to find all this in a big city like Bangalore. But it isn’t.

We spent weeks browsing home décor magazines for ideas, scouring e-commerce sites and visiting home décor stores, before we finally started putting together our little nest. It wasn’t easy.

Pinterest and Instagram filled my head with lofty but impractical ideas for an Indian home.

Magazines often focus only on those with much bigger budgets than ours and thus rarely offer any solutions.

E-commerce is really a hit-and-miss experience in India.

Visiting over a dozen stores and not finding anything that suits your design senses is the most frustrating experience.

It’s been three months and it’s still a work in progress – one piece at a time. What better way to illustrate my favourite French proverb, “petit à petit, l’oiseau fait son nid” (little by little, the bird makes its nest)?

And then a couple of weeks ago, I met the co-founder of Home Canvas, an online home décor discovery and styling guide, for some discussions about their social media strategy. As he narrated the ideas behind the platform and spoke about this cool new feature they are going to launch soon, I had to fight the urge to get up and envelop him in a bear hug…the Home Canvas Mag could potentially solve the mammoth problem of sourcing the right pieces for your home with a few simple clicks.

Imagine a platform that puts together design ideas, cool products and the best addresses to solve your home décor problems. A collection that has been curated by experts who understand the needs of a home in Bangalore and have an in-depth knowledge of the local market. A site that combines latest trends and classic must-haves and allows you to build your dream home without running helter-skelter from website to store to market. Yes, that’s what Home Canvas Mag promises to do. Could it get better than that?

My only grouse with the co-founders of Home Canvas – why didn’t they create the Home Canvas Mag earlier?